Loving scorn and compassionate sarcasm from the creator of Belacqua Jones.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

It's Only Make Believe

Dear George,

Every scam is like a magician’s sleight of hand in that it diverts the mark’s attention away from the deception at its core. History’s most complex and successful example of this skill is Corporatism, which rests on two deceptions: first, that the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is a person, and, secondly, that private property is sacred.

The court made no such finding. That little gem was inserted into header (a summation) of the case by the court’s clerk. The rest, as they said, is history.

The second deception, private property, is a dinosaur that lumbers along driven by its own momentum. It had validity in an era when life was lived on a smaller scale. The concept peaked during the age of entrepreneurial capitalism, but started to go into decline with the emergence of monopoly capitalism, became increasingly irrelevant in the age of corporate capitalism and is a sham in our age of finance capitalism.

Since the rise of corporate capitalism, the ownership of property has become so diffused among shareholders, mutual funds, and both private and public pension funds that corporate property should rightfully be considered quasi public property.

Don’t hold your breath, though.

This particular scam is so deep and so complex that the deception at its core will never be uncovered. My god, George, you have armies of media, academic, legislative and political forces so convinced that private property was a gift from God that it will never be questioned. The irony is that the Eighth Commandment, not to steal, is interpreted as sanctioning private property when, in fact, most private property is acquired through theft. Ask any Native American about that one.

A CEO is an employee who owns nothing. Oh, he may have a block of shares, but his ownership is so diluted by the hundreds of thousands of other shares being traded that it’s like a drop of piss in the ocean.

About Me

Case Wagenvoord's articles have been posted at "The Smirking Chimp", "Countercurrents" and "Dissident Voice". When he's not writing or brooding, he is carving hardwood bowls that have been displayed in galleries and shows across the country. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two cats.
His book, "Open Letters to George W. Bush" is available at Amazon.com.